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Mental Health Experts Seek To Block the Paths To Suicide
HughPickens.com writes: Experts and laymen have long assumed that people who died by suicide will ultimately do it even if temporarily deterred. Now Celia Watson Seupel reports at the NY Times that a growing body of evidence challenges this view, with many experts calling for a reconsideration of suicide-prevention strategies to stress "means restriction." Instead of treating individual risk, means restriction entails modifying the environment by removing the means by which people usually die by suicide. The world cannot be made suicide-proof, of course. But, these researchers argue, if the walkway over a bridge is fenced off, a struggling college freshman cannot throw herself over the side. If parents leave guns in a locked safe, a teenage son cannot shoot himself if he suddenly decides life is hopeless.
Reducing the availability of highly lethal and commonly used suicide methods has been associated with declines in suicide rates of as much as 30%–50% in other countries (PDF). According to Cathy Barber, people trying to die by suicide tend to choose not the most effective method, but the one most at hand. Some methods have a case fatality rate as low as 1 or 2 percent," says Barber. "With a gun, it's closer to 85 or 90 percent. So it makes a difference what you're reaching for in these low-planned or unplanned suicide attempts." Ken Baldwin, who jumped from the Golden Gate Bridge in 1985 and lived, told reporters that he knew as soon as he had jumped that he had made a terrible mistake. "From the instant I saw my hand leave the railing, I knew I wanted to live. I was terrified out of my skull." Baldwin was lucky to survive the 220 foot plunge into frigid waters. Ms. Barber tells another story: On a friend's very first day as an emergency room physician, a patient was wheeled in, a young man who had shot himself in a suicide attempt. "He was begging the doctors to save him," she says. But they could not.
Reducing the availability of highly lethal and commonly used suicide methods has been associated with declines in suicide rates of as much as 30%–50% in other countries (PDF). According to Cathy Barber, people trying to die by suicide tend to choose not the most effective method, but the one most at hand. Some methods have a case fatality rate as low as 1 or 2 percent," says Barber. "With a gun, it's closer to 85 or 90 percent. So it makes a difference what you're reaching for in these low-planned or unplanned suicide attempts." Ken Baldwin, who jumped from the Golden Gate Bridge in 1985 and lived, told reporters that he knew as soon as he had jumped that he had made a terrible mistake. "From the instant I saw my hand leave the railing, I knew I wanted to live. I was terrified out of my skull." Baldwin was lucky to survive the 220 foot plunge into frigid waters. Ms. Barber tells another story: On a friend's very first day as an emergency room physician, a patient was wheeled in, a young man who had shot himself in a suicide attempt. "He was begging the doctors to save him," she says. But they could not.
A small coal barbecue oven in the bathroom(any small room will do), after the windows and door are taped off with duct-tape is still the easiest way to go.
"Suicide does not end the chances of life getting worse". Well yes, it rather does. While it's a nice sentiment, it's something to which I would reply: "Please let me be the judge of that".
Depends on how selfish you are. If nothing else in the world matters to you, then life won't get any worse for you and you only.
Firearm accidents barely made it onto the chart I was looking at with 22 unintentional firearm deaths for the 10-14 year old category.
First of all, they are dramatically underreported, as has been shown numerous times. Second of all, I mentioned shootings, not just deaths. Fortunately a fair number of the shooting victims manage to survive, but that is only by luck (usually aided by the fact that the accidental shooter is often a child as well).
Firearm deaths are hardly the "low hanging" fruit on things killing children in the US, and it hardly happens "every single day"
Read the news. It is not hard to find an accidental shooting every single day in this country that involves a child. Hell, there were three accidental shootings in Houston involving children over the weekend. It does happen every day, and it is the fault of irresponsible gun owners.
Hence why most "gun nuts" get more than a little agitated when it is used as a reason to take away their rights.
Did I say anything about taking away rights? No, I did not. I even said that most owners are responsible. I just want people to be responsible. We have a lot of irresponsible shit-heads leaving loaded unlocked weapons sitting around like they are toys, and this is the result.
And your bit about the age of a child is a straw man argument. I follow the standard definition of a child being under 18. And even at that the accidental shootings that I pay the most attention to are the ones involving kids under 10.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.